Yet this dramatic scheme–and one of the major commissions at Ground Zero–has arrived without the controversy that has accompanied every other design for the site, from Daniel Libeskind’s master plan, to David Childs’s “Freedom Tower,” to the memorial for those who died on 9/11. Though there was no public input and no open competition, Calatrava’s design has drawn almost unanimous praise. The Port Authority–which had always planned to use the rebuilding process to improve the tangle of underground train and subway lines at the site–“wanted this station to be a grand point of entry for lower Manhattan,” says Joseph Seymour, the Port’s executive director. With the public clamoring for good design, the PA issued an invitation for architects to apply, and quietly picked Calatrava from the three finalists.
The interior of his birdlike pavilion appears to be almost as powerful as the exterior–there are vast public spaces that descend to a mezzanine and lower concourses underneath spectacular white concrete vaults. Calatrava wants to bring as much sunlight into the lower depths as possible, perhaps using glass blocks in the paving above. “What is interesting is to avoid the tunnel-like underground station,” he says. “Even indoors, you are outdoors.”
Calatrava’s architectural language is unique: it’s all about bringing lyricism to structural form–the ribs, the vaults, the bones of building–which reflects his training as both an engineer and an architect. In Europe, with its tradition of using the best contemporary designers to create public infrastructure, Calatrava’s first fame came from the unusual, graceful bridges he built in the ’80s and ’90s. He’s designed seven major transit stations, from Lisbon to Lyon, as well as an eye-popping concert hall in the Canary Islands. His only previous project in the United States–the striking 2001 addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum–also features a birdlike motif with moving “wings.” That winged brise-soleil (sunshade) had some technical glitches and cost overruns. But the building became an instant icon and a huge source of civic pride.
Calatrava, 53, who has offices in Zurich, Paris and his hometown of Valencia, now lives and works some of the time in a Victorian town house on Manhattan’s East Side. The house has been stripped inside to modernist austerity: white walls, pale floors and little adornment except for what Calatrava’s created. No, not just architectural models–but his own artwork, which is everywhere. Some walls of the house are covered with his watercolor studies of bodies moving–which makes sense, since he talks a lot about how people experience his spaces. He also makes abstract sculpture. One piece, of delicately stacked black boxes, twists and torques–not unlike a high-rise he’s designed that’s under construction in Sweden. “I work from art to engineering,” he says with a smile. “But in the center is architecture, and the human.”
Calatrava is busy with projects ranging from a new hall for the Atlanta Symphony to the Olympic stadium dome in Athens (which workers are scrambling to finish by summer). But none is likely to have the symbolic impact of the WTC terminal. Yes, it’s a transit hub that by 2008 will be flooded with thousands of commuters each day just going about their business: they’ll hurry by dozens of shops in the concourses, maybe pick up a latte, have their shoes shined, buy some flowers. Yet just a block away will be the WTC memorial, with its two great voids, a place to quietly remember the dead. Calatrava has created more than a quotidian underground station: it’s light and soaring, a place to hope as life goes on.
